Sunday 16 June 2013 21.23 EDT
First published on Sunday 16 June 2013 20.26 EDT

The Commonwealth environment minister has recently suggested that the federal government should have stronger powers to manage Australia's national parks. This is his response to recent moves by state government to allow logging, grazing, shooting, and commercial development in national parks, and fishing in marine sanctuaries. These moves devalue the primary objective of parks – protecting biodiversity and ecosystem function.

People love to visit parks because they are free from the buzz of our everyday lives. They are places for people to interact with and be inspired by nature. But state governments are changing park regulation in ways that are inconsistent with conservation objectives or with the robust science behind best practice management for reserves.

Australia's biodiversity is recognised internationally for its diversity and distinctiveness. Yet in the last 200 years, our biodiversity has suffered one of the highest rates of extinction of anywhere on earth. Hundreds of species are threatened, and extinctions continue. However, compared with many other mega-diverse countries with high levels of threat, our relative wealth places us in a position to do something about it. We also have plenty of reasons to act; our biodiversity underpins major industries such as tourism and agriculture. So governments should manage our biodiversity as wisely as possible.

Parks are our natural heritage, our "biological bank". They have been created primarily to protect native ecosystems from threatening human activities. Many parks are small areas of wild land or ocean, set aside by previous generations who recognised the benefits of preserving natural environments. Intact natural ecosystems are reservoirs of biological diversity and areas where ecological processes dominate. They're a library of irreplaceable living information and ongoing evolutionary change. They are one of our main tools for slowing the rapid rate of modern species extinctions.

Some states have justified their new regulations on the basis of short-term economic need, such as providing relief grazing for cattle during drought or sustaining ailing logging industries. However, use of parks for such activities is not free. For example, fencing to allow grazing in national parks by a small fraction of Queensland’s drought-affected cattle is budgeted to cost $500,000.

There are environmental costs too. Many habitats take decades to recover from short-term impacts, and many native species are particularly susceptible to extinction during drought periods. The temporary benefits of opening parks to cattle or allowing logging cannot be justified in light of the long-term and perhaps irreversible damage these actions are likely to cause. Who is going to spend millions of dollars restoring ecosystems damaged by temporary cattle-grazing? Who can replace old-growth trees and the diversity they sustain?

Some states have justified their new laws and regulations on the basis that allowing shooting and fishing restores “public access rights”. But there is nothing unusual, dramatic or draconian about restricting activities in parks. We regularly apply spatial restrictions to regulate various aspects of our daily lives. We don’t let people drive on the footpath – that would be foolish. So why should we allow people to shoot or fish in a biodiversity protection zone? Who is going to remove fishing debris from subtidal reefs after shore-based fishing is allowed in sanctuary zones? Who is going to restore top marine predators? And of course, it is impossible to undo the damage done by an amateur hunter if a bushwalker or native animal is accidentally shot. All forms of active management in parks, including the control of feral animals, must be a part of rigorously planned biodiversity conservation strategies underpinned by science.

The floodplain view at the Kakadu national park. Photograph: Canberra/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Scientific data suggest that our parks need to be expanded and managed more carefully to serve their main purpose of protecting biological diversity. Many parks are remnant areas not originally wanted for any other purpose. Other parks were inherited as abused landscapes no longer viable for their previous use. If anything, our parks suffer from being too small to sustain certain species, and too disconnected to allow meaningful exchange between some populations. To put further pressure on them is poor policy and tantamount to playing Russian roulette with our natural heritage.

As environments worldwide are subject to an increasing number of disturbances, it is critical to have places where such negative changes are limited. That is why protected areas are so important for biodiversity. The more we can protect large populations of animals and plants from local disturbances, the more likely it will be that we will avoid future extinctions and resist ecosystem collapse.

Parks are for the benefit of people who wish to relax in and be inspired by the bush, stretch their legs, listen to the birds, engage in non-destuctive recreational pursuits and smell fresh air. They are also for the long-term protection of biological diversity and ecosystem function. They are not for the direct benefit of private industry (mining or grazing), nor are they primarily for the recreational benefit of hunters or fishers. If state governments cannot resist short-term financial or electoral gain at the expense of disappearing habitat and species, then Australia will need several tiers of government oversight so that national parks are truly managed for all Australians.